Liquid borne energetic devices are a significant threat to the global mass transit industry. All transit sectors including Air, Land, Sea and border control check points remain at constant high threat alert levels. Mass transit and mass screening requires cost effective, rapid and reliable technology designed for presumptive identification of concealable threat liquid materials.
A variety of threat energetic liquid testing devices are commercially available. By way of example to illustrate the following section some commercially available kits include, but are not limited to: Hach Hydrogen Peroxide Test Kit, Model HYP-1, EM Quant® Peroxide Test, Catalog No. 10011, Gillardoni FEP ME 640 AMX X-ray, ChemSee Portable explosive test kit, Field forensics ELITE™ System, FIDO X3 Explosive detector, TraceX Explosive Kit. Broadly these devices can be divided into two groups: (i) electronic and (ii) non-electronic. Electronic devices are high cost and although some offer portability, most are laboratory bench mounted systems. (ii) Non-electronic devices are lower cost single use devices, adapted for ease in portability, offering presumptive identification of known energetic liquids.
Non-electronic devices can further be divided into two broad groups: (a) competitive immuno-assay based devices and (b) “spot test” devices which are composed of chemical reagents that react with chemical an analyte compound to give a known presumptive color indication.
Prior art commercially available spot test devices all suffer from a combination of issues which may include, but are not limited to: (i) devices are only designed to presumptively identify a single threat energetic liquid. In order to identify several threat energetic liquids, many different test devices would be required, perhaps from several different manufacturers; (ii) to facilitate a presumptive chemical reaction, commercially available devices may comprise hazardous acidic or alkaline liquid reagents; (iii) to facilitate a presumptive chemical reaction, commercially available devices may comprise volatile liquid organic solvents; (iv) the packaging required for most devices comprises a combination of glass ampoules which must be broken, reinforced heavy duty plastic baggies for storage of used hazardous chemical reagent(s), pressurized spray cans containing aerosolized hazardous chemical reagents, screw top reaction vessels, and batteries to power reaction devices or electronic eye color development systems; (v) virtually all commercially available devices require multi-step reaction sequences in order for a single unknown analyte to be tested. In summary, all commercially available devices are costly, require excessive equipment and packaging, comprise hazardous liquids exposure operators to unnecessary OHS risks, do not meet air shipping requirements, and require excessive analytical time.